Conventional communications satellites include hardware for effecting communications between terrestrial transmitting and receiving stations belonging to a only single user community, such as, for example, the commercial (e.g., civilian) user community or the military (e.g., government) user community. As a result, in certain applications where it is required to effect communications between civilian users and between military users that are located within a same general coverage area, more than one communications satellites are required to service the respective user communities. As can be appreciated, the use of more than one satellite for servicing these user communities can be expensive and inefficient. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a spacecraft communication system that can effect communications between civilian users and between military users simultaneously. This spacecraft communication system would enable a communication spacecraft to service a larger customer base than has been serviced by conventional communication satellites, and would thus permit spacecraft communications hardware to be utilized in a more efficient manner than conventional spacecraft communications hardware.